Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Labor says Siemer 'cleaned up' all pending cases

By Ferdie de la Torre
Reporter

Lawyer Deanne Siemer completed in 2008 a two-year project to clean up all pending labor cases that have accumulated at the Department of Labor's administrative hearing office from 1997 through 2007.

With the conclusion of the project, all 4,897 labor cases from 2007 and prior years have been closed, according to Labor Secretary Gil M. San Nicolas and Labor Deputy Secretary Cinta M. Kaipat in a report to the Legislature.

Exceptions to the closed cases were 22 cases from those years remaining on appeal in San Nicolas' office as well as 27 cases remaining in the Commonwealth courts, they said.

The two top Labor officials said the Administrative Hearing Office heard in November 2008 the very last 2007 case.

As part of the implementation of the performance benchmarks for Labor investigators and hearing officers who handle labor cases, Kaipat reportedly implemented a weekly tracking system for all cases filed in the current year.

San Nicolas and Kaipat said the tracking spreadsheet is updated every week and shows what cases have come in, whether the case has been mediated, what the status of the investigation is, when the case is scheduled for hearing, whether an administrative order has been issued, and whether an appeal has been filed or the case has been closed.

“This system has resulted in a more orderly processing of 2008 cases with no cases lost in the administrative work between investigators and hearing officers,” the two officials said.

Last year, 253 cases were filed at Labor. The Hearing Office reportedly completed 157 of those cases, while 96 cases remained open for investigations, hearings, and opinions to be completed during 2009.

San Nicolas and Kaipat stated that at Labor's Processing Division, Labor Director Barry Hirshbein accomplished the task of reducing over 11,000 pending applications to fewer than 1,000 by July 2008.

“Using the new automation system, we are now running about two to three weeks to get most application processed,” the officials added.